This report accompanies The Century Foundation’s report “Exact Title TBD: Student Debt and Race in California,” which examines how student debt puts outsized financial burdens on Black and Latino families in California, especially for graduate borrowers and parents.
While California lawmakers rightly draw on national research on student debt and race, the state-specific analyses we conduct in this research can help guide state policy that accounts for the distinct patterns of borrowing in California. In particular, these analyses draw attention to the effects of uncapped Parent PLUS and Grad PLUS loans on California’s families.
In this report, we walk through the details of the data that underlie that report and explain in greater depth what we do and do not know about student debt in California. Our analysis relies on four sources:
The structure of this data-focused report mirrors that of the policy report: the charts and tables in the policy report draw from our four primary data sources in the same order that they are presented here. (The first figures in the report draw from the FSA Data Center, and they are followed by figures that draw from NPSAS, and so on.) We also draw from the American Community Survey to a limited extent.
The code used to produce this document and its charts and tables can be found at this GitHub repository. All data used in this report is publicly available, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Census Bureau.
The FSA Data Center is a repository of data and statistics on federal student aid, including spreadsheets on student loans reported directly from the National Student Loan Data System. We use two files from the FSA Data Center:
For “per capita” measures of student debt and borrowing below, the population for comparison is the estimated total of all California adults aged 18 to 50, using American Community Survey data reflecting calendar year 2021, available here.
| Measure | 50-state median | California value | California rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Federal student loan debt per capita | $10,494 | $7,973 | 6 |
| Federal student loan borrowers per capita | 0.298 | 0.215 | 4 |
| Average federal student loan balance | $34,623 | $37,084 | 40 |
California has the most outstanding federal student loan debt and borrowers of any state, amounting to around 9 percent of the total portfolio.
| Measure | U.S. total | California value | California share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total outstanding federal student loan debt | $1,505,800,000,000 | $141,800,000,000 | 9.4% |
| Total federal student loan borrowers | 41,874,000 | 3,824,000 | 9.1% |
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